by Candace Robb
‘Does he know we are here?’ Owen asked.
‘I do not think so.’ Tucking his beads and his cloth up a sleeve, Michaelo turned back to Owen. ‘You must have some time alone with him.’ He made the sign of the cross over Sir Robert, then withdrew.
Rhonwen had already slipped away.
Owen knelt down, took Sir Robert’s cool, dry hands in his, and bowed his head over them. He thought of his daughter Gwenllian, who was so fond of her grandfather, so captivated by his tales of soldiering. He must tell her how even in his last illness Sir Robert had courageously spied for the Duke of Lancaster.
Suddenly Sir Robert moved his hands in Owen’s. Lifting his head, Owen caught a faint smile on the old soldier’s face. Sir Robert opened his eyes wide, parted his lips as if about to speak. But no sound escaped, not even the laboured breaths that had marked his last moments. His hands went limp.
Owen felt for a pulse. When he found none, he took a silvered glass, held it to Sir Robert’s lips. No breath fogged it.
‘May Amélie be waiting for you with open arms,’ Owen whispered.
He placed coins on Sir Robert’s eyes, then bowed his head to pray.
But first he wept.
EPILOGUE
April’s rains relented for a day and Dafydd, Brother Dyfrig, Cadwal and Madog at last prepared to depart St David’s.
In the courtyard of the bishop’s palace, Father Edern blessed their journey and Tangwystl held a stirrup cup to Dafydd.
‘My husband’s saviour. You shall ever be in my prayers, Master Dafydd.’ Her smile lit the heavens.
‘Be joyous in your lovemaking, my lady,’ Dafydd said, wishing she might nestle in his bed. But alas, he must be satisfied with the kiss with which she had thanked him for Rhys’s life. And was that not sufficient to give him happy dreams for many a night?
‘You look far too gladsome,’ Brother Dyfrig noted as they led their horses through Bonning’s Gate. ‘I grant you suffered only singed hair. But what of my arm? And poor Brother Samson – will he ever be clear in his wits?’
‘Was he ever?’ Dafydd laughed. ‘It was worth all the suffering, my friend. I feel alive, refreshed, blessed and fulfilled.’
‘Rhys might have found his way to St David’s had you left him on the sands.’
‘He would have been dragged to Cydweli by those barbarians. I do not doubt I saved his life.’
‘Tangwystl speaks true, I think. She will keep you in her prayers.’
‘And I shall keep the memory of her sweet lips, her wondrous scent.’
‘Will you write a poem about her?’
‘I wrote one long ago, though I did not know it.’
And as they rode off, Dafydd sang:
‘I love her, source of all bliss.
Ah men, neither Taliesin
Nor free-flattering Merlin
Ever loved a lovelier:
Strife-stirring copper-framed face,
Proud beauty, far too proper.
Gull, if you glimpse the fairest
Maiden’s cheek in Christendom,
Should I win no sweet greeting,
Ah God, the girl dooms me dead.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In The Apothecary Rose, the first book in this series, Lucie Wilton chided Owen Archer for his neglect of his family in Wales. He had left his country as a young archer more than fifteen years earlier, and since then he had neither returned to Wales nor had he communicated with his family. While journeys across such distances were not rare, they were not undertaken lightly, for the dangers involved, the time and the costs made wayfaring serious business in the late middle ages. Thieves made use of the woodland and isolated roadways to prey on travellers. Weather washed out bridges, flooded fords. Maps were few and inaccurate. Accommodations were uncertain. Merchants, soldiers, tinkers, members of a lord’s household who followed from castle to castle, these people had little choice in the matter. Pilgrims embraced the difficulties as the very road to salvation. But most people embarked on a journey only if necessary. Lucie herself has never travelled farther from York than her father’s manor.
Communication was also difficult: humble farmers such as Owen’s family would neither read nor write nor was Owen, as an archer, likely to have been literate. It was only in his later career as a spy that he learned to read and write, in order to send and receive reports.
Hence, Lucie’s strictures are harsh, because even had Owen written a letter to his family they would have had to find someone to read it to them. Their local parish priest might very well be illiterate, or might read only Welsh. And Owen, having been educated for his role as Lancaster’s spy, would have had no cause to learn to write Welsh.
In short, like many soldiers, Owen would have no way of knowing the fate of his family, though he would be well aware how negative the news might be: life was difficult for the common man in Wales as elsewhere, and the Black Death had ravaged the British Isles several times since his departure. I think he would be quite ambivalent about a journey into Wales, though more so regarding Cydweli, where he might have news of his family, than St David’s.
St David’s was and remains a major pilgrimage site. William the Conqueror, Henry II, and Edward I and Queen Eleanor all journeyed to St David’s. The peninsula in which the city nestles has been a sacred place throughout human occupation, at least from the neolithic period. High up on Carn Llidi are small burial chambers, and Coetan Arthur, a larger cromlech, is in St David’s parish. The peninsula is dotted with sacred wells, chapels, standing stones. In St David’s day (sixth century) the sea routes to the peninsula were often more reliable than land routes, and trade was brisk with Ireland, and also with Brittany; the mixing of the Celtic cultures is apparent in the area’s artefacts and legends.
The Bishop of St David’s was an important churchman. Adam de Houghton, the bishop at the time this book is set, was to become Lord Chancellor of England in 1377, through the influence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. His relationship with Lancaster was complex – for Adam was a lord in the Marches, and thus a peer of Lancaster’s in that role. Yet as the third son of the King of England Lancaster was clearly Adam’s superior overall, and the bishop courted his patronage to further his career.
To explain the government of Wales at the time is complicated, for Wales was not a single political entity. It was a collection of lordships, some ruled by the English (the March of Wales) and some by the Welsh. The English and the Welsh lived side by side in an uneasy peace. King Edward III’s grandfather had fortified the Welsh Marches with formidable castles, not only to protect the English rulers from the Welsh, but also to keep the Welsh from inviting into the country unwanted allies – such as the French. Many English town charters banned the Welsh from living and trading within the walls, even those who took a Welsh partner in marriage; but being inconvenient for trade, such bans were eventually ignored.
The corner of Wales in which this book takes place is heavily English. To simplify matters I have referred only to the four most prominent Marcher lords in the area: John of Gaunt, who controlled Cydweli (Cydweli Castle) and Iscennen (Carreg Cennen); John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (Pembroke Castle and Tenby); Adam de Houghton, Bishop of St David’s (Llawhaden Castle, the bishop’s palace at St David’s); and Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince (Cardigan Castle). Each Marcher lord had his own administrators and observed his own unique combination of Welsh law and English common law. When his people travelled through other lordships it was customary for the lord (or more likely his steward) to provide them with letters of the March, which identified them as being under the lord’s protection.
Tangwystl invokes one of Hywel Dda’s laws known as a group as ‘The Law of Women’ in order to annul her marriage with John Lascelles: ‘Should a woman discover that she is dissatisfied with the legal persona that has been imposed upon her by marriage, or simply wishes to be separated from her husband, she can do so legitimately under Welsh law by proving that he has been discovered with an
other woman not less than three times, has leprosy or bad breath, or is impotent. In Welsh law . . . a man’s wife can injure or even kill her husband’s cywyres, “mistress”, with her two hands, and remain free from having to make any compensatory payments.’* Although it is unlikely that this law was widely invoked by the late fourteenth century, and even less likely that an Englishman of Lascelles’s status would be expected to abide by it, Tangwystl hopes that Bishop Houghton will sympathise with her situation.
Owain Lawgoch, or Owain ap Thomas ap Rhodri ap Gruffudd, was the great-nephew of Llywelyn the Last, who briefly united the Welsh lordships against the English in the thirteenth century. Lawgoch had been brought up in France and had proved to be an excellent military leader. King Charles of France encouraged Lawgoch’s claim to be the heir to Llywelyn the Last – Owain would no doubt be an invaluable ally, with excellent harbours from which the French might stage an invasion of England.
For me, one of the greatest pleasures in writing this book was my daily contact with Dafydd ap Gwilym and Geoffrey Chaucer. Dafydd was gliding towards the end of his career in 1370 (I use Rachel Bromwich’s estimation of his life spanning 1320–1380), and Geoffrey was embarking on his first great poem, ‘The Book of the Duchess’. But age aside, they were quite different individuals in their lives as well as their work. A Welsh bard travelled the country, playing his harp and singing his songs in the houses of his patrons. Dafydd lived as a bard, though in his earlier years he also served as a tutor to his patrons’ children. Geoffrey was a civil servant, climbing through the ranks. He did not live by his poetry. Dafydd dressed in a manner befitting a bard; Geoffrey dressed in a manner befitting an agent of the Duke or the King. Reading Dafydd’s poetry is like looking over his shoulder as he reminisces about his triumphs and his disappointments. He celebrates love, both physical and sacred, nature, God and his patrons, from a deeply and often amusingly personal point of view. Geoffrey places himself at a distance in his poems, though readers are often tempted to see his bumbling narrators as self-portraits. He is a consummate observer of human nature. Dafydd laughs at himself; Geoffrey laughs at mankind. If I were to describe their differences in a nutshell, I would say that Dafydd would today most likely be a songwriter/performer with a flamboyant style all his own. Geoffrey would be a novelist with a poetic flair, but in his writing, not his appearance, a novelist who might be mistaken for the manager of the bookshop in which he is giving a reading. But as soon as he began to read, the drab illusion would be shattered.
Footnotes
To return to the corresponding text, click on the asterisk and reference number.
* Christopher McAll, ‘The Normal Paradigms of a Woman’s Life in the Irish and Welsh Law Texts’, in The Welsh Law of Women, Dafydd Jenkins and Morfydd E. Owen, editors, University of Wales, 1980, pp. 20–21.
